plead guilty._ Cast yourself on the mercy of God, pleading guilty, you shall not be condemned, if--4. _You plead the merits of Christ._ He is "the propitiation for our sin." Here is your hope, your plea. In availing yourself of this plea, all that God requires is repentance and faith. +III. The gracious promise.+--_Jabez Burns, D.D., Pulpit Cyclopædia,_ iii. 161-165. FOOTNOTES: [1] All our sins are of a "crimson" dye, for remember, it is not needful to have steeped our hands in a brother's blood to make our guilt "scarlet." God measures sins by privileges. One evil thought in one man is as much as a thousand crimes in another man.--_Vaughan._ CLEANSING FOR THE VILEST. i. 18. _Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool._ We are informed by the Rabbins that the high priest bound a scarlet fillet round the neck of the scapegoat, and that when the priest confessed his own sins and the sins of the people, the fillet became white if the atonement was accepted by God, but that if it was not accepted, the fillet remained scarlet still. The Rabbins further say that the goat was led about twelve furlongs out of Jerusalem where it was thrown down a precipice, and was mangled to atoms by the fall. In case of the sacrifice being received by Heaven, a scarlet ribbon which hung at the door of the temple changed from scarlet to pure white. They affirm that it is to this changing of the fillet and ribbon from scarlet to white that Isaiah refers in our text. While we regard these as fictions, and not as facts, they serve to illustrate the nature and greatness of the change spoken of in it. +I. Scarlet and crimson represent sins of excessive and glaring notoriety.+ 1. The soul has been steeped in the dyeing element. 2. It has carried away as much of the dyeing quality as it can hold. It is twice dipped in the dye-vat. 3. The sins glare and arrest the eye like scarlet in the sun. As the uniform of the British soldier is most conspicuous, so these sins glare in the eye (1) of society, (2) of conscience, (3) of Divine justice. +II. Scarlet and crimson symbolise the fast and permanent hold of these sins upon the soul.+ 1. The sins are not a _stain_ but a _dye._ 2. The sins are not superficial: they have penetrated into the fabric, every thread of which has been dyed. The faculties are the threads: the whole man the web. 3. The sins are not typified by _any_ dye, but by _scarlet_ and _crimson,_ which are as permanent as the fabric they colour. They resist sun, dew, rain, the wash. +III. Scarlet and crimson becoming white as snow represents the perfect removal of the greatest sins.+ The colouring element is removed. The soul is _restored._ The power that removes the sin yet saves the soul. _Application._--There is hope, then, even for the vilest. The most desperately sinful need not despair.[1]--_J. Stirling._ FOOTNOTES: